An astounding number of readers have responded to the Cash campaign for a reform of inheritance tax laws. Not surprisingly, those who have taken the time to write in have very strong views. Some have told us how unfair they find a tax that affects their ability to help their children and grandchildren to buy their first homes. Others have told us how difficult their elderly relatives find it to understand and cope with the issue. In contrast, some find the idea of our campaign repugnant, self-centred and right-wing. A representative (and edited) selection have been printed below. We welcome all your contributions - keep them coming! Email cash@observer.co.uk or write to Cash, The Observer, 3 - 7 Herbal Hill, London EC1R 5EJ.

Heavy burden for mother to bear

My dad died this week and my mother, who is 83, has to face a difficult enough time emotionally without the added anxiety of struggling with the legalities of IHT.

My father came from a very poor family in Essex and educated himself by means of scholarships, becoming a school teacher and then a headmaster.

When he bought the house my mother still lives in he paid £5,000 for it, and could only cover the mortgage repayments by taking in paying guests. He bought the house some 40 years ago. It is in serious need of repair but even so, to developers it is probably worth £1.5 million. My mother has some savings but the vast bulk of the estate is in the house. She does not want to move at this late stage but is anxious as to what happens when she dies.

Since I, as the oldest child, wish to take the burden of financial worry away from her, I find myself trying to keep her calm while at the same time to understand the legal implications and in so doing give her advice. Help!Tony Patemanby by email

Campaign is misguided

I was convinced when I picked up the Cash supplement that I had received another newspaper instead of my usual Observer. Whatever has happened to the slightly radical left-of-centre newspaper for it to dish this sort of thing up? I am afraid that it looks like a severe lurch to the right.

There are three straightforward reasons why the thrust of your arguments is wrong:

First, the vastly increased value of housing over the past few years and the resultant increase in the number of estates falling within the ambit of inheritance tax has nothing whatever to do with the efforts of the deceased. Rather it is a function of the hugely distorted housing market in the UK.

Second, inheritance tax is not a tax on the dead, it is a tax on the living. Like their parents before them, the inheritors have not lifted a finger to create the vast increases of value in housing.

Third, for a given level of government services, any revenue not raised from inheritance tax has to be raised elsewhere from the community. It is hardly symptomatic of a fair society if we allow a small proportion of people to gain a large tax-free windfall when we all have to pay up to 40 per cent on what we earn year in, year out. Graham Goddard Kidwelly, Carms

Should struggle end this way?

I am going through the last stages in dealing with my mother's estate. It did not feel easy paying £36,000 to the government. My mother was widowed when I was two. She received a war pension, a reduced state pension through not working enough years and, in her later life, attendance and nursing allowances as a result of her arthritis. My sister and I received free school meals as my mother's income was insufficient.

My parents had bought a bungalow in the late thirties, a risky but, as it turned out, shrewd move. I'm not sure how my mother kept up the mortgage payments, but her last property was a lease on a sheltered flat which sold for £125,000. Her needs were basic and she never allowed herself to believe she had any money. So she kept saving.

It beggars belief that my mother, struggling throughout the forties and fifties to bring up two children on her own, ends up dying as one of the richest 5 per cent in the country. Is everyone telling the truth?

As you pointedly ask, does the government really intend to tax this type of case? Michael Chapman Walton on the Hill

Only the rich will benefit

Writing as a middle-class retiree whose property will be subject to inheritance tax in due course, I suggest that your article seeks to arouse a false sense of unfairness among the more affluent. You assume that those who inherit have a natural right to this bonus as against the country at large. This overlooks the fact that the children of middle-class families tend to be well endowed in the first place.

Again, inheritance is subject to the whims of the deceased, which can be seen as unfair by those close to them. Even in quite normal families, it can be the source of rivalries and rifts between siblings. But many families are not normal. Where there are no children, it becomes a windfall for more distant relatives. Second families are increasingly common, and this can lead to an arbitrary distribution of the inheritance among half-siblings. Above all, official statistics point towards an increasing gap between rich and poor, and the tenor of your article appears aimed at strengthening this inequality. Tight inheritance laws would be among the most palliative measures for limiting a sense of unfairness both within families and among the populace at large. Paul Spencer Frome

Problem can be easily solved

The problem is that the IHT threshold has not been raised by the Chancellor in line with the increase in house prices. This could be easily remedied.

Governments constantly advise us to save for our old age, and for most people their home is their main asset. Unless the injustice of the amount of IHT levied on property is tackled soon, it will remain impossible for many people to pass on their assets to their children. Celia DobbieLondon

We should be proud to pay up

I would like to express firm support for inheritance tax. Inheritance is the largest source of inequality, from which IHT can provide some mitigation. Revenue from IHT can also mitigate some of the unfavourable effects of house-price inflation, for example by financing affordable housing schemes. The Observer should be encouraging us to be proud of being in a position to pay IHT: it implies a private benefit of at least £263,000 (hardly 'punitive') and a public benefit of supporting those for whom such assets are far out of reach. Sarah KissackLondon N16

Gordon doesn't deserve windfall

My wife and I bought our house in Cornwall in 1988 for £163,000. At present it is worth about £500,000, so clearly we have made £337,000 windfall profit and Mr Brown is perfectly entitled to his £95,000. Or is he? To start with, the property was in a very poor state. We have probably spent £100,000 on the place. But if this expenditure was classified as a deductible expense, the actual gain we would have made would be £237,000, which would mean Mr Brown would receive a mere £55,000.

The message from the government is clear. If you save, and want to pass your savings on to your offspring on your death, you will incur a tax penalty. So, raise money on your assets and spend the tax first. We thought that the Chancellor wanted us to save. Now we know why. Silly us! Peter Hayes-DaviesCornwall

It's the least painful way

If IHT is abolished, reduced or otherwise ameliorated, some other tax will have to increase to compensate. So it behoves us to look and see whether IHT is a more painful form of revenue raising than the alternative. I submit that it is not. The middle-class homeowners for whom you feel so much concern do not pay it, as it is not levied during their lifetime. In any case, the wealth on which it is payable has not been earned - it is merely a fortunate, undeserved windfall brought about by market conditions over which they have no control.

IHT is, however, paid by the inheritors. The inheritors have not earned it either, just been the fortunate beneficiaries of an accident of birth. Most of us don't need the money anyway because, by the time we inherit, our own feet are long since securely on the property ladder.

You state that IHT was aimed at the very rich and not at the middle classes. Well, frankly, anybody who is the lucky recipient of a few hundred thousand pounds they haven't earned is rich - middle class or otherwise. Dik Leatherdale Teddington

Let us help our children

We have been fortunate in that I was in full-time employment for the whole of my working life, paying tax on my earnings under PAYE. We want to leave the assets that have resulted from that work to help our children, who have done less well in a more cut-throat environment. Two of them have no permanent job. One is an actor who is out of work more than he in and has never been in a position to purchase a property of his own. Our daughter lost her job as a result of serious illness. They will need everything we can leave them in order to get through and yet they will, under present arrangements, be faced with a large tax bill when we depart. Grossly unfair in my opinion.

We thought one way we might be able to help would be to set up stakeholder pensions on their behalf. But we have been advised by the Inland Revenue that any payments we might make during the seven years prior to our death would be classed as part of our estate and subject to tax at 40 per cent. What was that someone said about creating a fairer society? John HagueNewcastle upon Tyne